With Vodafone UK’s latest campaign, ‘The Open Line’, urging parents to break the silence around online safety, we asked two current Vodafone employees about the digital challenges facing parents.
In partnership with the NSPCC, the campaign centres on the importance of real conversations around staying safe online and features parents asking children the questions they most want answered.
To explore these conversations in more detail, Vodafone UK News spoke to Jon and Alice-Rose – two Vodafone employees and members of the company’s Parents & Carers Network.
The network – one of many across the business – is designed to support working parents by providing a safe space for colleagues to share experiences, seek advice and celebrate milestones.
The pair now form part of the network’s steering committee – a core group of volunteers who guide its direction, priorities and activities – making them well placed to share their perspective on the most pressing online safety issues facing today’s parents and carers.
Safe spaces
First proposed in 2017, but not passed into law until 2023, the Online Safety Act is now one of the most discussed topics in the online safety space.
Most recently, the discussion has centred on the Act’s regulations around ‘harmful content’, which has seen it enforce stricter rules around the types of content that user-to-user services, such as websites, can publish online. Offline, however, these conversations can be difficult for parents to have.
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“Even though [our daughter] is 12 and has her own phone,” says Alice-Rose, a Design Assurance Specialist and mother to a 10 and 12-year-old, “we constantly check it.
“We have conversations with her as well to make sure she knows exactly who’s she’s talking to.
Jon, an Operational Efficiency Specialist and father to a three-year-old, agrees: “This is the world we live in now. I’m equipping my son, in a child-friendly way, to know what things are out there.
“Our son has six or seven books around emotional regulation and what to watch out for, with regards to unfriendly people and what that looks like.
“Ultimately, I’m just trying to be as prepared as I can.”
Screen time
With a recent report suggesting that one in five children spend at least seven hours a day using phones and tablets, screen time is also a big topic of discussion for those in a parenting role.
“Our son didn’t have any screen time until he was about two-and-a-half,” says Jon, “and we keep any programme visualisation to a minimum, because we’re quite aware that a child’s brain is still developing.
“A lot of videos are quite high energy, with a lot of light, which draws that addictiveness to the TV. So, we limit that as much as we can.”
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Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) does not recommend any screen time for children under two, with no more than one hour of sedentary screen time recommended for those aged between two and four.
Once children enter pre-school or nursery, however, it can be difficult for parents to control these limits. Whereas, for older children, the issue arguably becomes less about screen time and more about what that time in front of a screen is being used for.
This is certainly the case for Alice-Rose, whose son has additional needs and uses his tablet to self-regulate, whether at home or in school.
“While we’ve allowed him to have a quite a lot of screen time for that reason,” she says, “he only uses a certain number of apps that are more educational.
“In general, what I try to do is limit the amount of time that is actually online, as opposed to screen time. In fact, with my 12-year-old, her screen time has fallen naturally as she’s got older, since she’s preferring to be on phone calls with friends more than be online.”
Safety settings
Of course, for parents today, there is a seemingly endless and ever-changing list of websites, apps, platforms and games to familiarise themselves with. And, though many of these now have built-in safety features, some parents may not be aware of them.
“For me, because I have an older daughter, a lot of the online safety concerns come from her playing games online with other people,” says Alice-Rose, “because you have no idea who’s on the other end.
“A lot of children like to add friends on these games and then continue playing with them or talking to them but, when you don’t know exactly who is behind that profile, it gets a little bit scary.”
No silver bullets: A safer online world won’t happen without long-term change
Online safety is one of the most important issues of our times, one that requires a measured, long-term and deft approach, argues Nicki Lyons, VodafoneThree’s Chief Corporate Affairs and Sustainability Officer.
This is why Vodafone created Digital Parenting Pro in partnership with online safety experts, Digital Awareness UK. As one of the UK’s largest parental controls and safety settings resources, parents can use it to understand the safety features available across popular apps, games or devices.
Despite this, however, many parents are aware that controls alone aren’t enough to keep their children protected.
“We do have worries about gaming and we do have a lot of worries about content,” says Jon. “Our biggest worry at the moment, however, is that – no matter how many blockers we may put in or how many layers of parental control we apply – it simply might not be enough.
“Our son has started using tablets for school work, for instance, and there are adverts that come up that are very questionable – even on a kid’s profile with an adult content lock.”
Open conversations
Since 2023, Vodafone has worked with the NSPCC to help parents feel confident in having online safety conversations with their children, creating toolkits and guidance that make navigating the digital world easier for families.
‘The Open Line’ gives a glimpse into the questions that parents most want to ask regarding online safety, and why these conversations matter so much in today’s increasingly digital world.
Watch the video now, explore the online safety resources created by Vodafone UK and the NSPCC, and stay up to date with the latest news from VodafoneThree by following us on LinkedIn and Twitter/X.
